Radio

Chapters One to Five

Chapter One

Coldness capped the tips of my fingers from the window letting in the crisp fall's night air in the hallway before blanketing the rest of me in utter fear and panic, as I attempted to will myself to grab ahold of the doorknob and open the door that led to my mother's bedroom. Despite the disarray downstairs: from the front door torn from its hinges with Grey-M Industries's logo haphazardly spray painted on it, the broken furniture to the muddy footprints leading up to my mother's bedroom, I still naively hoped, with each step that had brought me closer to her room that my nightmare-ish imagination of serious harm having come upon her hadn't gotten the best of me and that when I entered her room, I wouldn't find her there. In my dream scenario, she would have escaped through the window by the lower level roof behind the headboard of her bed and into the bomb shelter created by my great-grandparents decades ago that was well hidden by undergrowth.

Oh how I wished I hadn't decided suddenly to leave several hours earlier today in annoyance, my friends sheepishly following behind me, at what I had thought of my mother's, at the time, foolish "feelings" that Grey-M operatives were in town, dressed in civilian clothes, when she had gone shopping yesterday. If I hadn't again just thought the notion as utterly stupid, then maybe the current carnage of my childhood home wouldn't have happened. Guilt fueled my anger toward myself in regards to said argument. And as my hand continued to hover around the doorknob, I asked myself the question of why I had thought it was safe to bring my friends and I here. Why?!?! Even with the help of one of my unit members Maddie's hand slipping into our necks to removing the tracking implants from my mother, myself and the rest of our unit using her vapor-like ability, they had still managed to find us. Foolish, foolish me! Because I missed seeing my mother and the comfort of her warm embrace? Was that the reason I overlooked the lengths to which the tyrannical company, we had all been enslaved by, to retrieve us? Eight years, given a few months or so more, of not see my mother's face that felt more like an eternity?

Granted, eight years is still a long time, but with the allotted monthly, carefully monitored phone calls, up until the decision to escape a few years ago, had lessened the longing for her presence. Though just barely. And though it shouldn't have been strange, since she and I shared the ability of telepathy, as a young child, I still found it odd how she had always known I was about to come into her room for I had rarely been able to do the same with her. Even that shouldn't have been strange because she was more adept at shielding her mental footprint than I was at the time.

So when I finally worked up the nerve to wrap my shaky hand around the doorknob and opened the door a fraction, I waited in hope of her acknowledging my presence, whether it be mentally or audibly. When I heard not a single greeting or acknowledgement from my mother, the dread of what may awaited me, when I would fully opened the door, whipped across my face like a hard slap. It took more courage than I care to admit, given this was my mother and the fact that Grey-M operatives had been here, to push the door fully open. At first glance, it would have appeared that nothing was out of place, especially with the moon's light coming in from the windows behind my mother's headboard and the one unbroken lightbulb in the hallway. The Grey-M operatives were notorious in leaving only one lightbulb intact, with any other bulbs left shattered on the floor, as one of many ways to send a message to the enemy to let them know that Grey-M was coming for them. I didn't want to think about the other ways they loved to send a message— not now. Not ever. Because again this is my childhood home and this is my mother that we are talking about. But regardless of the limited light just added to the creepy "normalcy" of the room. From the turned over and open paperback book, some werewolf romance novel by Vicki Lee Thompson on her nightstand with a pair of reading glasses that were barely balanced on the seam in front of the rectangular Japanese-styled lamp, an outfit thrown on a rocking chair for her morning shift at Trader Joe's to the jewelry and other random items on her cherry wood dresser.